The Medallists

Marion Harry Spielmann

Introduction

The following discussion of late-nineteenth-century British medallists comes from pages of
Spielmann's British Sculpture and Sculptors of Today (1901).

THE art of the medallist — apart from the craft
of the token-stamper, with his frosty relief
against a dazzlingly bright, smooth ground, or his
cold, coarse, clumsy rechauffé of pseudo-classic
models of a debased period — is little understood
in England. Few realise that a fine medal is not
an ordinary relief medallion in miniature, but a
modification of sculpture in which the planes
must tell more than the lights and shadows.
The medal is unappreciated and its dignity
misunderstood, and its value as a record of
great events practically ignored; though it is
obvious that as a tribute to the dead it offers
in a small and beautiful form the perpetuation
of a memory in imperishable material. The
French have brought to perfection this exquisite
art which, as Vasari so shrewdly saw, is the link
between painting and sculpture. Alike in cast
medals and struck, they out-distance at the
present day every other nation — especially our
own, which has but two or three medallists
devoting themselves to the art, and which has
up to lately always had to invite the collaboration
of the sculptors when any important
work has to be done. Sculptors make beautiful
medallions; but they can hardly be expected to
turn from a colossal statue and model a tiny work
of a special character with all the marvellous
delicacy and perfection of technique of a Chaplain
or a Roty who are engaged in nothing else.

Mr. G. W. de Saulles

The leader of our official
medallists and engravers,
Mr. de Saulles is a Birmingham man who
studied under Mr. Edward R. Taylor for the
purpose of becoming a painter. His intentions were
diverted, however, and under Mr. J. Wilcox he
became an engraver in steel, in the hollow, and
so cut many dies for medals for private firms.
In 1893 he was appointed engraver to the Mint.
The full list of his works is a long one; the
more recent medals are the following: "Sir
G. Buchanan, F.R.S.;" "Mrs. J. H. Powell;"
"Harvest;" "Mr. Horace Seymour" (placquette);
"Sir G. G. Stokes, Bart." (one of his most
successful works); the reverse of the bronze
coinage, 1895; "Miss Langley " (plaquette);
"Professor Sylvester, F.R.S.;" "Sir W. C.
Roberts-Austen, K.C.B.;" the reverse of Queen
Victoria's Jubilee Medal, 1897; and the war-medals
— "India" (reverse); "Canada" (reverse);
"Uganda;" "Sudan;" "South Africa." He
has also executed the Great Seal, and the
Haslar Hospital and Dublin Police Medals.

Mr. de Saulles is a master of his craft, and
he is an artist as well. Like Mr. Bowcher, he
has been influenced by M. Chaplain, M. Roty,
and other French masters; but the pressure
presumably exerted on him by our official
atmosphere may possibly prevent him from
losing entirely the formality and neatness which
British taste demands. Left alone he certainly
produces, and will go on producing, works of art
finer than any official medals that have yet
come from him.

Mr. Bowcher, still a young
man, is the oldest of our
chief practitioners in the medal proper. A
South Kensington "National Scholar" and the
pupil of Mr. Onslow Ford, he has studied the
French school and has produced works of real
dignity and beauty. When we find our Municipal
Authorities of to-day confiding to the
unnamed employés of die-sinkers medals which,
in the old Italian days, would have been
placed with Pisanelli, Cesari, Matteo de Pasti,
and Benvenuto Cellini, or when they entrust
them to "medallists" weighed down by cold
conventionality and the bald formality of worn-out
tradition, we can hardly wonder at a
poor result.

Two medals by Frank Bowcher: Left to right: (a) Science and Art Department Medal. (b) Thomas Henry Huxley, FRS (1825-1895). The original text included a black-and-white photograph of the Huxley medal instead of this one in color. [Click on these images and those below for larger pictures.]

But Mr. Bowcher has now made himself a
name in the new path which he is the first
Englishman of his generation to tread. His
chief works are: Medal for Tewfik Pasha
(dies cut at the Royal Mint), 18S6; the
Cope and Nicol School of Painting medal;
the Visit of the King and Queen of Denmark,
for the Corporation of London; Baron Schröder
(presentation gold medal); the Tower Bridge
(Corporation of London); medals of Sir
Hermann Weber and Dr. Bisset Hawkins (for
the Royal College of Physicians); the Huxley
Memorial Medal (for the Royal College of
Science); Medals of Award for the Royal
Colleges of Art and Science (for the Science
and Art Department); Sir Joseph Hooker (for
the Linnæn Society); the Royal College of
Music; the Rajah Supendro Mohun Tagore's
Wedding Medal for the Duke and Duchess of
York; and a medal of Queen Victoria. These
are all struck. The cast medals and plaques
include the School Board Attendance Medal and
a Colonial Medal, both with special sittings
from H.M. the King; Sir John Evans (for
the Numismatic Society), perhaps the most
admirable and refined ot all Mr. Bowcher's work
(Royal Academy, 1901); Dr. Parkes Weber, and
Mr. Charles Welch.

In these there appears more of the
influence of Roty, Chaplain, Dubois, Dupuis, and
the other great medallists of France, than of
the early Italians. But the character is Mr.
Bowcher's own; it is strong, and it has introduced
to England the charm of modern
lettering and edge, of the new treatment and
colour.

Mrs. Linda Vereker Hamilton

Lilian V Hamilton's Maharajah of Kapurthala.

The artists who have dabbled in medal-making are many, but
few are those who have remained entirely faithful
to it. Among them is Mrs. Vereker Hamilton.
Influenced by her master Mr. Legros, and
following the bold and apparently rugged and lumpy
manner of the French medallist M. Charpentier
— as opposed to the exquisitely refined modern
classicism of M. Roty — she has introduced an
extremely clever series full of character, including "Lord Roberts," "Viscount Gort," "Sir Donald Stewart," and the "Maharajah of
Kapurthala." The last-named was purchased
for the Luxembourg Museum in Paris.

Miss Elinor Hallé

Miss Hallé, also a pupil of Mr. Legros, has
modelled a number of
medals not dissimilar in manner, and also
favoured by the Luxembourg. They include
"Cardinal Manning," "Cardinal Xewman,"
"Sir Charles Hallé," "Sir Henry M. Stanley,"
and "Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A."

Other
artists, some of the most prominent of the
day, have worked in the
same direction. Edward Poynter designed
the Ashantee War [Medal. Mr. Alfred Gilbert's
medal for the Art Union takes a high place. The
fine design and superb execution of "Post eqnitem
sedet atra cura" made such sensation in the
Academy at the time of its exhibition that it
is hardly likely to be forgotten. To Mr.
G. J. Frampton, A.R.A. are to be credited, among
others, the "Quincentenary [Medal
for Winchester College" (1894), the Gold Medal
for Glasgow University (1895), and the City
Imperial Volunteer [Medal for the Corporation
of London (1901). Besides these artists, Mr.
Goscombe John, A.R.A., Mr. Toft, Mr. Albert
Bruce-Joy, Mr. C. J. Allen, and others have
produced work of a standard that seems to
render the future calling in of foreign help
unnecessarv and unjustifiable. At the same
time, greater progress would be more rapid if
foreign medallists were encouraged to exhibit
here.